Word: toros
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...urgent odor that this year attached itself to The Orphanage, a Spanish thriller written by Sergio G. Sanchez, directed by first-timer Juan Antonio Bayona and shown in the little-attended Critics' Week section. The movie does have a pedigree: it was executive-produced by Guillermo Del Toro, the Mexican filmmaker whose Pan's Labyrinth had its world premiere at last year's festival before becoming a surprise hit and an Oscar-winner in the States. The Orphanage has the same vital vibe: the sense that all crafts of filmmaking are bent to leading us into another, darker, magical world...
...grant that the movie is indebted to dozens of previous psychological thrillers, from Psycho and The Haunting (a tingly scene where Laura feels someone snuggle into her bed, thinks its Carlos, then is shocked to see him enter the room), from the Spanish Spirit of the Beehive to Del Toro's own The Devil's Backbone. And there are moments when plausibility takes a back seat to the need to make Laura stay one or two more nights in the condemned manor - when she does things because, well, because it's a scary movie. But there will be other moments...
Spain in the war-torn '40s is the setting for this anti-Franco, pro-magic fairy tale. If you were wondering what all the critical rapture and Oscar nominations were about, make your move now. Guillermo del Toro's fable is definitely not for kids, but it is a fable--about a child (Irana Baquero, above) who escapes from real nightmares into an eerie, fulfilling wonderland--that is as potent and scary as the great early Disney cartoon features. Except there is no happy ending...
...William Holden with a mustache and the young Eli Wallace in Baby Doll, was a man's man: a carpenter by trade and an amateur boxer for pleasure. (A grueling fight, as bloody and intense as anything in Raging Bull, serves as the climax to his 1953 Pepe el Toro.) He was a fanatic about his workout regimen. In a time when Hollywood movies rarely revealed much of their male stars below the collar, Pedro went topless in nearly every film, displaying the bulky muscularity he was so proud of. You could count on a scene where...
...many of his films, a Pedro smile or tear or grimace? make the wildest plot twist plausible (almost). A great spirit must endure great suffering. His silent soldiering-on here is no less heroic than the dreadful beating he takes, and then dishes out, during the Pepe el Toro boxing match. As the ringside announcer says with awe in that movie, "His heart is so big, his chest can't contain...